Site Mobile Navigation

Restaurant Owners Charged on More Than 400 Counts

The owners of the two Saigon Grill restaurants in Manhattan were arrested Wednesday on more than 400 criminal charges, including violating minimum-wage laws, falsifying business records and defrauding the state’s unemployment insurance system.

Simon and Michelle Nget, the owners of the popular pan-Asian restaurants, pleaded not guilty to those charges as well as to charges of demanding illegal payments from their deliverymen, tampering with witnesses and creating fraudulent records to cover up their actions.

Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo announced the arrests of the Ngets, who have been locked in a two-year battle with 36 deliverymen that has included calls for a boycott, picketing in front of their restaurants and a judge’s order for them to pay $4.6 million for wage violations.

Several deliverymen asserted that they usually worked more than 65 hours a week but were often paid only $520 a month, or less than $2 an hour, far less than the federal and state minimum wage.

“Like so many restaurants across New York City, Saigon Grill was run on the backs of its workers,” Mr. Cuomo said in a statement. “These workers allowed the business to thrive, and in exchange they were allegedly cheated out of wages, fined for ridiculous reasons” and, he said, “pulled into a painstaking ploy to cover it all up.”

The charges involve the Saigon Grill restaurants on Amsterdam Avenue at 90th Street and on University Place at 12th Street — which remain open — as well as a Saigon Grill on Second Avenue at 88th Street that closed in 2006.

One deliveryman at Saigon Grill, Yu Guan Ke, who worked at the uptown restaurant for more than a decade, said he was glad to see charges filed. “I’m happy because what happened will serve notice to other restaurant owners that they should improve their working conditions,” he said.

Photo

Simon and Michelle Nget, owners of two Saigon Grill restaurants in Manhattan.

At the arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court, the Ngets’ lawyer, S. Michael Weisberg, blamed the deliverymen for his clients’ problems.

He said of the Ngets: “They never underpaid their workers. Their workers are liars. They never cooked the books.”

The deliverymen asserted — and a federal judge agreed in his October ruling — that the restaurants had illegally deducted from $20 to $200 of the workers’ pay when they committed infractions like letting the restaurant door slam on their way out.

An error has occurred. Please try again later.

You are already subscribed to this email.

Mr. Cuomo’s office said that the Ngets were each charged with 151 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree, 45 counts of tampering with physical evidence, and 46 counts of offering a false instrument for filing. All are class E felonies, which carry a sentence of up to four years in prison.

Mr. Cuomo said that those charges were based on the Ngets’ creation of fake payroll records that were furnished to the State Department of Labor during an investigation. His office said the charges involved the couple’s attempt to reduce their unemployment insurance taxes by not reporting the employment of more than 65 people.

Mr. Cuomo said that the charges against the Ngets included many related to minimum-wage violations: 11 counts of failure to pay wages, 127 counts of failing to keep records, and 16 counts of receiving kickbacks.

At the arraignment, Judge Felicia Mennin said the case would go to a grand jury on Monday. The prosecutors initially requested $150,000 bail for each defendant, but Judge Mennin reduced that to $50,000 bond for Mr. Nget and $20,000 bond for Mrs. Nget.

In October, Magistrate Judge Michael H. Dolinger of United States District Court in Manhattan ruled that the Ngets often had not paid their deliverymen for all the hours worked, and that the couple often took illegal deductions from their pay. One of the deliverymen was awarded $328,000.

Joel Stonington contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A39 of the New York edition with the headline: Restaurant Owners Charged On More Than 400 Counts. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe